


She's My Man: A Christmas Eve Story

by WeAreVillaneve



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Romance, F/F, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21865930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreVillaneve/pseuds/WeAreVillaneve
Summary: A post-Season 2  alternative ending.   And a new beginning for an Asian woman with amazing hair.    For the first time in a long time, she is not only going to celebrate Christmas, she's even going to buy a gift.All she needs now is for the receiver to show up to accept it from the giver.This story has nothing to do withThe First Taste of Sin.   Mostly.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 95





	1. She's My Man: A Christmas Eve story

  
  
(artwork: [peacockblue.postype.com )](https://t.co/dNWTgvJs2A)

She didn’t know how long she laid there on the hard, unyielding stone. Had it been minutes? Hours? Days? She was cold and trembling. The sun was shining brightly this April day, but she was shivering. No matter what she did she couldn't get warm.

Blood loss will do that to you.

Depending on age, weight, sex, the average adult weighing 150 to 180 pounds should have about 1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood in their body. She weighed 125 lbs soaking wet. Well, she was wet now because she was lying in a pool of blood. 

She was dying. She knew it. She just couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t cry out, though she could cry, so she wept. Wept big tears that ran down her cheek and into the crimson puddle. 

She wasn’t going to give up though. She didn’t know how, but she knew she had to live through this. She had something she never had before: Clarity. 

She heard voices chattering excitedly. _Oohing_ and _ahhing_ at the crumbling splendor that was Hadrian’s Villa. An untold number of selfies were being taken and memories created. She wondered if the sight of a little Asian woman with amazing hair staining the stones red would be noticed by the tourists.

Lucky for her it was and she was rescued and treated for a gunshot wound that missed her vital organs by that much and would take months for her to fully recover. Of course the police had questions. So many questions like “Who are you?” and “Who shot you?” and “Why did they shoot you?”

She answered honestly the questions she could and lied repeatedly to the questions she chose not to answer honestly. Eventually, the police stopped asking questions and moved on to easier and less tangled attempted and successful murders. The hospital kept her for three weeks and then released her with some antibiotics and instructions on how to clean and dress the area. 

When she asked how much all this was going to cost, the nurse just smiled and informed her the bill was already paid in full. By whom? The nurse didn’t know, but they had paid in Euros dropped off by a woman. 

This did not make her feel settled. Quite the opposite effect actually. 

She was still weak and disoriented, but she felt good enough to stand and move. She wanted to get the hell out of the hospital and then out of Rome. She didn’t feel safe. She didn’t know if she would ever feel safe again. Not when someone might come for her and finish her off.

Heading up that list was the woman she had set her entire world afire for as they danced in the ashes only to find there was nothing left to build upon. 

So she healed and waited. Waited for someone to come disguised as a doctor or a nurse or an orderly or as a visitor. She would wait all night wide awake and wide eyed and quite certain when whomever did come they would strangle her or stab her or poison her or shoot her.

Nobody came. Not to visit and not to kill her. She wavered between relief and disappointment.

With neither enemy or ally seeming to care about her, after being discharged she went directly to the British embassy in Rome. She was not greeted with warmth by her countrymen, this strange woman wearing clothes given to her by the hospital since the ones she came in with were a bloodstained mess, but she knew the right code words which allowed her to bypass the bureaucrats and get direct access to the ambassador and more importantly, his aide from British intelligence.

A week later and she was back in London. She has no job. She has no husband. The letter he left in their deserted and barren home expressed in clear, unambiguous language liberally spiced with expletives and bitter fury. He blamed her for the death of the woman he had left her for at the hands of the woman she had left him for. He hated her. She was unfaithful and unforgivable. He was selling the house and had put all of her clothes and books and everything else into storage and he was going to divorce her as soon as possible. 

She tried to muster the energy to care. She couldn’t. She didn’t care. She wasn’t in love with him anymore. He was too nice and too normal for a murderous freak like her. He would be better off without her. He would be bettering his chances to simply live. 

It remained to be seen if she could do likewise. She find out soon enough. But not in this house or in this city. Every reason she had to stay was gone. It was time for her to follow suit and hope her problems didn’t follow along. 

Which of course they would. That was just how her luck worked. 

  
  


**II.**

  
  
  


When she left London the first place she went was home. Back to Connecticut again. She hated Connecticut. She didn’t want to, but there was nowhere else for her to go to finish her recuperation. When she called her mother the chilliness of her response didn’t surprise her in the least. She was a daddy’s girl and when daddy had divorced mommy and later died, mommy had a ready-made reason for the failure of their marriage: their reckless, selfish, disrespectful daughter.

They say, “home is the place where when you knock on the door they have to let you in.” Maybe that’s true for some families, but it wasn’t true at all for hers. Mommy only tolerated her daughter at best. When she walked in the house (slightly surprised her key worked) with her luggage, mommy barely acknowledged her existence. She had notified her when she was coming home, but mommy didn’t meet her at the airport. 

Too much of an inconvenience. Time wasted driving back and forth to pick up an ungrateful daughter was time better spent on her _Law and Order_ reruns. She felt her mommy’s rejection like a slap in the face. Except a slap in the face is usually unexpected. 

She stayed for a month and then she left. She didn’t tell mommy where she was going and mommy didn’t ask. She merely grunted, “Good-bye” while her hand was twisting the doorknob to leave.

When she stepped outside, she breathed in deeply tasting the fresh, crisp Connecticut air for a final time. Then she slipped the house key off the ring, glared at it for a moment and threw it in the bushes. 

She would never need it again. 

  
  


**III.**

  
  


After leaving England and Connecticut, she had her choice of places to go. She chose Quebec City. 

After all those silent dinners and long nights of no conversation with mommy, she had decided to do some research on where in Canada she might want to live. She never seriously entertained Toronto or Montreal. She didn’t want to be around that many people and particularly not around gobs of America tourists whose entire knowledge of their neighbors to the North consisted of hockey, free healthcare, and oddly shaped bacon. Quebec City had a certain European charm to it and it's primary language was French, which she spoke, but not fluently.

Mostly , she just wanted to be left alone. She wasn’t a people person before she had been shot. She definitely wasn’t one now. 

Her MI6 background opened some doors for her, but she didn’t try to push herself to the front of the legal immigration line. She would have waited in the U.S., but she somehow breezed through and was soon set up in a beautiful two bedroom, one bath home she had found online. The property wasn’t cheap, but she had money. Between the proceeds from selling the house she had shared with her ex-husband and the substantial bonus she had received from the British intelligence service for shutting up and going away quietly, she was set up quite nicely.

Then there were the deposits into her bank account that had begun a few weeks after she had opened it. They weren’t huge, but they were certainly large. $20,000 here and $75,000 there. Every month since April they had come. She didn’t know how her banking information had fallen into the hands of her stalker, but soon she had built up a nice little nest egg and while the bank accepted they were “gifts” from her wealthy Korean uncle to his favorite niece, she knew exactly who was funnelling the money to her. 

She also knew why. Guilt is a terrible, terrible thing to live with. She should know. She had felt nothing but guilt after she had done that awful thing in Paris. Did her assailant feel guilt for the horrible thing she had done to her in Rome? She still couldn't believe she was capable of taking a blade and shoving it into a human body, but she had. Then she moved up to splitting a man's brain open with an axe. _Quid pro quo._ Right? We're even. You hurt me and I hurt you and that's just what you and I do. Right?

Had there ever been a time when they weren't hurting each other when they so badly needed to love each other? Particularly when there seemed to be a marked shortage of suitors for either one of their affections. She needed her. But did she need her back? Or was she leading the lamb to a vengeful slaughter? _Maybe we have to hurt each other because it's so much easier than figuring out how we can live and love together._

The house at 12 Rue Hamel was far from a palace, but even further from a hovel. It was bright and airy with hardwood floors, new furnishings and though built in 1936, had been completely renovated some nine years ago. It was the nicest place she had ever seen. 

She had a home. Finally. 

She began to fill it with art. Nothing garish, but certainly more prestigious than a picture of dogs playing poker. She populated the house with stylish furniture, plants and no television. She didn’t watch the news. She didn’t troll the internet for stories about mysterious murders. She had left all her books about criminology and serial killers and women who kill in a storage locker in London. 

She who travels fastest, travels lightest. Carrying the burden of her past interests had nothing to do with her present life. 

She found a job working at a library. Mostly she helped older people figure out how to web-surf and assist schoolchildren with their homework assignments. She was pleasant enough, but she wasn’t overly friendly. Not with the rest of the staff and certainly not with the library patrons. Especially not the married men and women who would first ask for a book recommendation and in the next breath ask for her phone number. 

She politely turned them down. All of them. Even the ones she was attracted to. People were messy and demanding and commplicated. She was alone, but she wasn’t lonely. 

She had a cat. 

She didn’t like cats, but she didn’t dislike them either. She was indifferent to pets. Her husband had insisted they would save money with the eggs provided by the chickens in the chicken coop, but they were dumb and noisy and shit all over the place and inevitably his chickens became hers to care for. She wasn’t eager to repeat that experience.

But, oh, that cat. 

It showed up one morning when she was hurrying out the door to work. It was hungry and had apparently chose her doorstep to wait out the rain from the night before. She had nothing to offer the cat and just stepped over it with a terse, “Sorry, pal.” 

When she returned home the cat wasn’t there. Then, as if by magic, it showed up at her front door mewling loudly. 

She looked in the refrigerator. There wasn’t much to offer a hungry cat besides some milk a week past its expiration date. She poured it into a bowl and set it out by the front door. 

She had no idea why she had done it. She wasn’t a kind person. Any kindness in her had evaporated after she took an axe to the head of a man who was trying to kill the woman she was obsessed with. 

She was a killer. A killer who had gotten away with murder. A murder committed to save the life of a woman who had committed an untold number of murders herself. 

But she didn’t say the name. Names have power. She was terrified if she spoke the name, how long until its bearer appeared?

Best not to tempt the fates. Best not to say the name. Not even if she desperately wanted to. 

  
  
  


**IV.**

  
  
  


Time passes. Memories fade. Horror endures. 

She had nightmares. Bad ones. She dreamed of chopping and chopping and chopping into the body and the head of a man. A man who had children who would now grow up without their father. A man who was connected to a shadowy and secret organization of killers. A man who would have strangled to death the beautiful Russian assassin she had given everything up for. 

The same assassin who shot her in the back when she refused to be her property. She had already allowed too many people to deceive and manipulate her. She had walked away from the security of a loving marriage and the best job she had ever had to chase this daft fantasy where you can butcher a man one moment and then run off to Alaska for a spaghetti dinner in the next. 

_What a fool believes no wise man has the power to reason away._ That was a line from a song from some California pop-rock band her ex-hubby liked and she merely tolerated when he would sing it off-key in the car. Then, it was just mildly aggravating. Now, it was annoyingly ironic. 

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been told to steer clear of the Rome assignment. The young computer genius on her team had warned her how she was changing and not for the better and again after she sacked him for telling her the truth. There was a pregnant agent she barely knew, but liked well enough to give her a foot massage and in return she cautioned her that she was running an off-the-books operation with no paper trail and it might be what it turned out to be: a trap she had voluntarily walked into set by one woman to snare a second woman to catch and hold a third for an unknown scheme of the first woman. 

A honey trap, as it turns out, and hadn't she walked straight into it? Hell, she practically ran into it. She wanted that beautiful woman so badly. She longed for her. She lusted for her touch. Longed and lusted so badly for it she screwed over not one, but two of her colleagues. The first had been stabbed to death by the beautiful woman and he was only her best friend in this whole miserable world and God, she missed him so much.

The second was simply an annoying horny millennial man-child with an overactive sex drive. Nothing but a dick with ears, but he was available when the beautiful woman whispered in her head to get her off. She hadn’t had a legitimate, honest-to-God orgasm in years. She had made all the appropriate noises and thrashed around as if someone had shoved a horse's cock between her legs even as her adequate, but in no way exceptionally endowed ex-husband grunted and thrust himself into her, as if that was all it took to solve the baffling mysteries of the female orgasm. When he would finally roll the hell over and start snoring, she would take matters into her own hands and finish what he had started.

It wasn’t an exciting life, but it was safe. **Nothing** about the beautiful woman was safe. That’s what made her utterly irresistible.

She had a semblance of a normal job. A normal life. It wasn’t much, but it was hers and she had chosen it for herself. She had chosen. Nobody else.

That made her feel free. But the longing and the lust hadn’t gone away. Not entirely. Every so often she would be walking the streets of the city and there would be a flash of long blonde hair that looked like hers. 

It couldn’t be though. She was long gone. Vanished. If she wasn’t on the grid, she was all the way off it. You could search outer space or the core of the earth and if the beautiful woman didn’t want to be found, nobody was going to find her.

Nobody but the only woman who had found her before, but wasn’t looking for her now. She was out of the business of trying to find outrageously gorgeous, but lethally psychotic assassins. 

Christmas was coming. She had things to do before it arrived. 

**V.**

This is how she spent her day. Wake up. Hopefully, without the aches and pains of a sleepless night spent quivering in terror that a squad of ninjas would appear in her bedroom, rip her to shreds or when she did sleep, a vampire Russian temptress with long blonde locks and was a real major league asshole might show up to warm her up between the sheets. Right before she tore open her throat and bathed in a torrent of her sweet red blood.

She wouldn’t say her name. Either of them. No. That was far too dangerous. That way laid the off-ramp to mouth-foaming madness. No, thank you. Don't go down that road. 

She would awake in a pool of sweat or damp nocturnal emissions she had coaxed from between her legs. Yeah, she could take a cold shower. Yeah, she could take an even colder bath in a tub filled with ice cubes, and all that. She had learned to like it cold. Maybe it was lying on the numbing and bitterly cold, cruel cobblestones of the Roman ruins which had brought her around to this profound state of mind.

Or maybe she was just losing it. Entirely possible after a particularly harrowing, life changing event. 

Being shot in the back and left to die by your Most Favorite Russian Assassin in the World had that effect on you. Call it a character flaw, if you like. She didn’t think much about it. She just lied to herself she still wasn’t still intensely immersed in her feelings about….

_DON’T SAY HER NAME! EITHER ONE OF THEM!_

She would yawn and stretch and work a kink out of her leg and fitfully try to fall asleep for a few hours so she didn’t walk in with too many dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. 

Just don’t say the name. Don’t even think of the name. Be silent and let the silence protect you.

You dirty, dirty liar. 

  
  


**VI.**

  
  
  


She awoke and she knew it was time. 

Christmas time. 

She busied herself in the days prior to Jolly St. Nicholas’ arrival down the chimney. 

She cleaned and dusted and swept and wiped and washed and then she did it again. Three times. The house had to be immaculate. Dirt and dust and debris were not to be tolerated. 

Then, and only then when the house was spotless did she go out and buy a Christmas tree and the decorations for it. It would not be perfect because she had never trimmed a Christmas tree in her entire life. She wasn't buying into Santa Claus or Jesus Christ's birthday either on December 25th, but then again she wasn’t expecting to be held to an unreasonably high standard by the guest she was expecting for the holiday.

She went to the outdoor shopping mall and ran up her credit card balance. Not that she was worried about maxing it out or paying it off. If things turned out badly she’d probably be too damn dead to worry about a crappy credit rating, so why not splurge? Live a little before you die.

Her guest deserved The Best. Second-best wasn't going to cut it. Not for her. She couldn’t take the cheap way out and just fork over a gift card. It was better to give than to receive and she was determined to give a gift well worth remembering. 

She decided to take a few days off from her job. She got a pedicure, and a manicure and a nice massage. She got her hair styled, but not cut. She tried to tan and failed, so instead she bought something black and silky and sleek and she looked damn good in. She slipped it on that night as she relaxed in her home reading a book and sipping from a bottle of wine. 

The doorbell rang. She glanced up, then placed a bookmark on the unfinished page. She padded barefoot across the polished, hardwood floor. She peeked out the window and much to her delight noticed it was snowing.

A white Christmas was on the way. How traditionally delightful. 

She unlocked and opened the door. Looking down, there was a brightly wrapped red box with a bow on top and a card pinned to the bow. She stepped shoeless to the doorstep and glanced both ways. Traffic was light and there were a few people hurrying through the snowflakes on their way to whatever unfinished business they had on the night before Christmas.

  
  


The box was light and shaking it gave no indication of its contents. Upon further consideration, considering her previous life, shaking a box without knowing who sent it could carry anything from several live copperheads or an explosive device set to go off when some idiot shook it. 

She set the box inside, closed and locked the door. Carefully, she placed it by the tree, refilled her wine glass and settled back on the couch as she picked up the book again. The cat came over from its favorite spot by the window and purred as it crept between her legs. 

The sudden blast of a frigid breeze wafted across her uncovered ankle as if a door had opened then closed without a sound. The cat perked up and jumped down from her lap and strolled into the kitchen. She watched it’s tail disappear around the corner.

She closed her eyes and softly exhaled. She waited for what she knew was coming next.

“Hello, Eve.” 

She opened her eyes. There in her living room stood the woman who had nearly killed her with the cat purring with contentment as it nestled happily into her left arm. In her right hand she held a gun. 

“Hello, Villanelle. Merry Christmas.”


	2. She's My Man: A Christmas Eve Story - Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve and Villanelle meet for the first time since Rome.
> 
> It does not go well. _Quelle surprise!_

**([illustration by Lorna Evans/Squeals for Thrills](https://www.etsy.com/shop/SquealsForThrills?ref=nla_listing_details))**

This was a first for Villanelle. She had never before carried on a conversation with someone she had shot. 

“Why are you here?” Eve asked. There was no quiver in her plainly-spoken question. There was no terror in her dreamy, dark eyes. She was asking out of honest curiosity and not concern for her safety.

Villanelle dropped the cat to the floor, unzipped her black leather jacket, and settled gently into a chair opposite of Eve. Crossing her legs, she leaned forward and idly spun the pistol around her finger. 

“It was time to pay you a visit to see how you are doing. You look well, Eve. How’s your pain?”

“Not too bad. Thanks for asking,” she replied calmly. They could have been two former friends bumping into each other at the checkout lane of a grocery store. “Would you mind taking your shoes off?”

“I don’t mind at all,” she said and slipped her boots off. She got up to set them by the kitchen door. “Do you have any wine?”

“Yeah. Help yourself. Glasses are in the cupboard above the sink.” 

But they weren’t friends. They weren’t lovers. Were they enemies? Villanelle was determined to answer that question.

“Are you having sex, Eve?”

“Wow! That’s one hell of an opening line,” she laughed. “No. Not really.”

“Why? You are a stunningly beautiful woman. You are even starting to dress the part. I would think finding a lover would not be an issue for you?”

“It’s not about finding a lover. I’d prefer to find someone to love. The last time I had sex was with someone I didn’t really like but they were available for me to use them. I’d rather not continue going down that particular road.”

Villanelle nodded her head in agreement. “I can understand that. I have had quite a lot of sex since....since the last time we talked. Gorgeous women and good-looking men alike from a half-dozen different countries. But do you know what all of them had in common, Eve?"

“Uh-uh. Tell me.”

“They weren’t you. They were all boring,” she replied and spun the gun on her finger. “I found them all to be inadequate and unsatisfying.” The weary frustration in her voice made Eve look directly at her seeking to make eye contact, but Villanelle looked away.

“That’s too bad. I wish I had some advice for you.”

The last ounce of forced politeness dribbled away from Villanelle like water down a drain. 

“It’s your fault. It’s _all_ your fucking fault!" she yelled. "I told you I loved you. I told you I would take care of you. You told me I didn’t know what that means, but I do. _I do!_ ”

Now it was all out in the open. _Finally._ They had never really discussed what had happened in Paris and if that old wound was still raw, the Rome fiasco was still agonizing to the touch. Honest conversations were an alien concept to both of them. Eve blamed herself. She was the older of the two and presumably wiser, though that rarely seemed the case.

Here was where Villanelle would have normally expected Eve to fly into a rage of vile curses from being shot. That, or start blubbering and soaking her face in useless tears. 

What she got instead was Eve doing the last thing she would have expected. Eve threw her head back and roared in laughter. Villanelle glared in stunned silence for a moment then pointed the gun directly at the woman across her who was still chortling.

“Do not laugh at me, Eve. This is not a joke. I am not here for your amusement.”

“Then what _are_ you here for, Villanelle?" Eve snapped back. "You already know how I’m feeling. You paid for my hospital stay in Rome. You put thousands into my bank account. Why? Was that your way of saying, 'I’m sorry for shooting you in the back, Eve?' ” 

The sound of the safety being clicked off resonated in the room like a thunderclap followed by a sudden shriek of unadulterated fury from the younger woman to the older. "Fuck---you really _are_ asking for it, aren't you?." Villanelle snarled. "Are you so stupid to believe I won't fill you up with bullets, flay you alive with a butcher's knife, or throttle you with my bare hands until you are limp and cold? Perhaps I was wrong about you, Eve. Maybe you like pain? Maybe you get off on it?"

The coldness in how she spat those words left Eve trying very hard not to piss herself. So far, so good. It was evident Villanelle was seconds away from going into full feral mode and then she would paint the walls blood red. Eve had the sick feeling that maybe she had poked the Russian bear a little too hard?

“I have nothing to be sorry for. I only wanted you to recover until I saw you again." Villanelle hissed. "You broke my heart. Repeatedly. I wanted you to love me like I love you, but you won’t and you never will.” Eve knew, this was no act. Her favorite obsession spoke from a place of tormented agony and the naked candor of her pain caught Eve by surprise.

Scrambling to shift the focus, Eve blurted out, “Villanelle. How would _you_ know? You’ve never been in love in your life. Not real love. You can’t possess someone you love. You shouldn’t even try to, but you can’t help yourself. You fill your life with the best clothes and jewelry and the prettiest girls and boys come running like hungry dogs hoping one of them will be selected to enter your boudoir. That’s not love. That's not even close to real love.”

"Then show me. Show me how to love and not possess."

Eve frowned and pondered the gauntlet Villanelle had thrown down before the spoke, “ Here’s my question about that: Are you _willing_ to learn? There’s more to a relationship than flirting shamelessly and great sex. How are you going to handle disagreements, arguments and the inevitable issues that occur for every couple? Would you just walk away in a huff or pull out a gun? Could we sleep in the same bed and guarantee both of us will wake up the next morning?"

"Look me in the eyes, Villanelle and promise me you would never hurt me. Tell me you know how to love me without killing me whenever I disagree with you or do what you want."

Villanelle stared down at her feet. She felt paralyzed. Obsessive, idealized love was one thing. Declaring she could control her natural urge to taking lives was a lie and even she didn’t believe she wanted to. If she was honest enough to acknowledge this incontrovertible fact there was no way she’d convince Eve. 

She despised saying it, but she forced the five words from her mouth. “No. I don’t know that.” 

“ _Why?_ Why can’t you?” Eve’s tone was petulant and pleading, but Villanelle’s only response was to once again point the muzzle of the gun directly at her heart. 

“Open your Christmas gift, Eve.”

With some apprehension, Eve drained the last remains of her glass and licked her lips. She stood and walked over to the brightly sparkling tree and carried the box back to the couch. She looked down at the box and then back up at Villanelle. There was nothing but blankness on her face. She gestured again with the gun, “Open it.”

She untied the red bow and began ripping off the wrapping paper. Inside the box was a leather case. She lifted it up and sat back on the sofa and placed the case in her lap.

Eve stared at the silent assassin. “Is this what I think it is?”

Villanelle shrugged. “Yeah. It’s not locked.”

With a resigned sigh, Eve opened the case. Inside was the dull metallic tint of a Glock 17. Eve hefted it. 

“It feels light,” she said with a frown. 

Villanelle stood up. “That’s because there’s only three bullets loaded.”

Eve’s eyebrow twitched. _Oh no…no. Not this. Not like this._

“You asked me why I was here. I am here to give you a gift. It is the best gift you’ve ever received. It is the gift of death. Our deaths.” 

Eve's gaze alternated between the cold black steel of the gun and the dead-eyed look of Villanelle. She felt a lump in her throat and opened her mouth to speak---but nothing came out except for one croaked word:

_“Why?”_

The assassin shrugged her shoulders.

“After I shot you, for the longest time I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kill you, fuck you, or simply get your attention. I wanted to take you with me and keep us safe. I wanted to slaughter you, but only after I tortured you until you begged for my forgiveness. I wanted to run my tongue down your neck to your toes, stick my fingers in you, and turn you inside out.” How silly this sounds when I say it out loud." Villanelle said sadly.

"It was all a hopeless fantasy. As big as the one where we run off to Alaska and try to be 'normal.' Yeah, sure. As if either one of us have any clue as to what the fuck 'normal' is. Why should we want to be normal, when we can be unique? That's what I really wanted for you and I, but It will never happen."

The room felt cold to Eve. Villanelle's next words only made it frigid. 

"I want you to kill me. Put two bullets in me. One in the chest to put me down and another behind the ear to finish me off. That should do the trick." 

"And...and the third bullet?" Eve replied as she choked down the bile rising in her throat.

"You put the gun in your mouth, pull the trigger and kill yourself."

"And if I refuse?" she replied as her mouth went dry. 

"Then I will kill you and then myself."

**II.**

Villanelle had a dark sense of humor like pretending to give someone poison pills or cracking a sick joke after executing a target, but this was no joke. 

"I can’t live without you and I won’t let you live without me. When I said, ‘You’re mine,’ I meant it, Eve. You’re right. I don’t know how to love without possessing. I don’t know if I even want to. If we can’t live together, at least we can die together. 

"I want this to be over. This aching feeling I have every day that I was the architect of all our miseries. You’ve taught me how to feel guilt, but not how to apologize. So now we both need to die." 

"I don’t want to die, Villanelle," Eve said calmly. "Destroying ourselves solves nothing. You hear me? **NOTHING**." 

"Sure it will, Eve. Nobody loves you but me. We have nothing and no one besides each other. No one will cry or mourn for us when we are gone. They’ll find our bodies and in my pocket the suicide note I wrote for us about our death pact we made."

"That’s how you see us? Just a series of binary choices? Run and Hide? Stab or Shoot? Kiss and Fuck?

“Yes. I do”

"What about ‘Live or Die?” 

“What about it, Eve? You think that’s a choice you have?” 

  
There it was. The slightest opening in the door toward a rational, reasonable end to this ridiculous domestic dispute instead of a gory, brain-splattered finale. Eve went for it.

"I think that’s a choice _we_ have and I opt for living. You’re doing the same thing you did in Rome. The exact same thing you did before! Haven’t you learned a goddamn thing? Dying is easy. It’s _living_ that’s hard. I know you were trained to have no fear of death. In fact, you enjoy death. You enjoy watching someone take their desperate final breath. You enjoy watching the light in their eyes fade and flicker until it goes out completely and finally.”

There is a certain amount of inherent risk that comes with facing an armed psychopath with their violent ways. Sort of comparable to feeding the lions in a zoo and losing sight of the tragic fact that at any moment they might revert to their wild side and rip you to pieces, but Eve had gotten past her initial shock at Villanelle's final solution to their story. Though she had behaved foolishly when she was employed by MI6 to hunt Villanelle, she was not a fool. She had badly misread the situation in Rome and her education had come at the expense of a bullet in the lower back. 

Villanelle was there to put an end to this maddening circle game by clearing all the pieces off the board in a spasm of homicidal madness. What else could be expected from her? She was skilled in sex and death and if she couldn’t fuck Eve she might as well ruin her. 

Eve placed the gun back in the case and slammed it shut loudly. Louder than she needed to, but she was making a point. 

“Fuck you. I’m not going to kill you and I’m not going to allow you to kill me, Villanelle.”

The Russian glared at the Korean-Canadian with ferocity, “Allow? How brave of you, Eve. Pray tell how are you going to stop me from doing what I want? Are you going to bargain with me for your life?”

Eve snorted disdainfully and leaned back on the pillows, “Bargain? _With you?_ Please. Don’t be patronizing. You’re a narcissist, not a nihilist. You don't want to kill me and you certainly don't want to be dead." 

Villanelle could barely believe what she was hearing. How dare Eve treat her with such disrespect. Had she forgotten so soon how skillfully she had manipulated her into butchering Raymond? She had to admire how reckless Eve could be even if it had fatal consequences.

  
  
“Wh-where is all this coming from, Eve? You want to beg me for mercy? You want to see if you can talk me out of this?”

Eve leaned forward and placed her hands on her knees. “I’m not going to beg you for shit and especially not for my life. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me blubbering and screaming for your mercy.”

She had seized the moment and now she pressed her slight advantage.

  
“They really did a number on you, didn’t they? The Twelve and Konstantin. They laid in wait until they found you had mutilated and murdered your teacher’s husband so there would be no one between you and Anna. They took a seed in you and nurtured it to bloom into what you are today: a relentless and remorseless killing machine.”

  
  
  


Villanelle had already decided as soon as she heard Eve trying to plead for her life she would pull the trigger and put a hole in her head. Give Eve a second and she would turn it into a minute and she would convince Villanelle to spare her. Eve was smart and tricky, but Villanelle was smart too and not about to be tricked again.

“Coward.”

Eve could not coaxed a more astonished and angrier reaction from her adversarial obsession if she had spat in her face. Villanelle's entire face reddened with infuriated exasperation and she shrieked in livid ire and outrage. How in the **FUCK** did Eve dare to talk to her as if she was some...some... _nobody_. Eve had obviously gone mad with fear, but that was no excuse for her rudeness.

“Eve, have you gone totally insane? Do you _want_ me to shoot you?"

“You heard me, Villanelle. You’re a damn coward.”

The blonde’s eyes narrowed and grew feral and dark, “Tread lightly, woman. You don’t want to make this worse. Suffering and agony is something I'm trying to spare you from, Eve. This could be a beautiful thing, but you’re making it ugly.”

“Aw...am I ruining the moment again?” the brunette sneered in response. “Break me then, baby. Smash me. Rip me. End me. FUCKING KILL ME!!! Prove to me before you splatter me all over the wall that you have _some courage_. Just do that much for me!"

For one moment, Villanelle's eyes bulged in disbelief. Then she regained her composure and the mastery of this absurd and ludicrous scenario. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about. You’re trying to distract me. Confuse me. But you won’t," Villanelle shrieked. "No! I won’t permit it.!

The ex-agent sensed she had pushed the ex-assassin into an extremely tight corner and she hurriedly pressed her slight advantage before the moment passed and Villanelle recalled it was she, not Eve, who wielded the weapon.

"You really aren’t good at this living thing are you? All you know is how to hurt and how to kill. They trained you to do that better than anybody else and all it cost you was your ability to feel anything. They give you money to buy pretty things and make you pretty too. At least on the outside. On the inside you’re ugly and empty. Let me fill your emptiness. Don't kill me. _Live with me!"_

The young Russian woman stared at her. She was searching for the right response to Eve's desperate plea, but internally she was at war between her craving to exterminate Eve and the craving to possess her body, mind and soul and if---IF she didn't shut Eve up, she might weaken and give in to her lust for love instead of murder.

Eve knew this as well as Villanelle, so she kept talking though her throat was parched and she was ready to piss herself in utter dread. Having been previously shot by Villanelle, she was desperate to avoid a second time around. Next time the killer might not be so conflicted as to simply wound her. This time Villanelle might shoot Eve right between the eyes. 

  
"Just you and me. Right here. Go when you want, but you can always come home. Let me be your home, Villanelle. I want us to be together."

Outwardly, Villanelle, aka the Master Assassin formerly known as Oksana, gave nothing away. She was still and placid and had a steely-eyed determination to murder her supposed object of obsession right here and now. But she hadn't. Villanelle had hesitated and when she was focused on killing someone she never hesitated. Not even when the mark was Konstantin, the man who had groomed her into the fashionista/executioner she now was. Konstantin had taught Oksana how to kill, but it was Villanelle who had developed the panache it took to be uncanny and unique as she was.

Which is why she had attracted Eve's interest and later uncontrollable mania. It had led Eve to break out of the constricting cocoon of dull sex with a man she settled down with despite feeling zero excitement for or even pleasure with. Whether or not Eve was a repressed lesbian or a conflicted bisexual whom had convinced herself she must be heterosexual since only men had made a move on her, was still to be determined. It wasn't as if Eve had yet figured it out yet. 

The attraction---this _urgency_ she felt whenever she was around this remarkable, but highly unstable woman, aroused her in ways she could barely articulate. Villanelle filled her thoughts. In every waking moment she was never too far, yet never close enough. At the moment Eve perceived Villanelle as an imminent threat, but if she could seize the moment, maybe--just maybe--she could soothed into being the romantic woman of her dreams.

Twas the night before Christmas and all through her house Eve ached Villanelle's touch. She required it like she did another breath and if she did not feel it soon, Villanelle wouldn't have to bother with a bullet. Eve would expire from sheer heartbreak.

"We are bad for each other, but we’re worse for anyone else, so let’s be bad together. I can love you like that, Villanelle. Because I know you can love me that way too. First things first though. You have to have the strength to stay alive and love me. Or you can be weak and embrace death by killing us both.”

Then she threw her last trump card on the table. Now it was all or nothing at all. Whether she lived to see another day or died here and now would depend on the next few seconds. Not minutes, but mere seconds.

"And we still haven’t kissed. You know that’s not right, don’t you?” Eve said slowly and with great deliberateness. 

She stood up. Her hair was up, which never failed to annoy the younger woman and was precisely why Eve had put it up in the first damn place. Why deal with her lush, but untamed mane when there was nobody around to appreciate it? Her sweet and nice and terribly ho-hum husband never did and she had thought this was the man she was destined to spend (and end) her life with.

_Until Villanelle._

Villanelle had come along, stormed in her world, wrecked it, recreated it in her own image and this woman had made her far more hot and bothered than any man before her ever had. Villanelle was all the man she wanted and all the woman she could handle.

_She was her man_. No one appreciated her beauty more than this woman. For four fucking decades Eve Polastri had believed the only path to true womanhood came through the fumbling/bumbling arms of a man, whom though no matter how loving and affectionate he might be, he did not-- _could not_ \--understand what it took to excite and satisfy her.

Only a woman can truly fathom the myriad mysteries of a woman like Eve. Only someone like Villanelle could understand someone as complex, complicated (and more than a little bit fucked up) as Eve was. 

**III.**

Villanelle’s cold green eyes began to mist. There was a wet drop of moisture. Where was it coming from? _Oh shit---were these tears?_ She couldn’t be crying. She never cried. Okay, there was that one time in Amsterdam when she got upset when Eve didn’t show up to witness one of her magnificent murders and she took those horrible drugs and nearly strangled a rude woman before Konstantin had pulled her out of there, but she was stoned out of her mind so she really couldn’t be responsible if she woke up the next day feeling like hammered shit and staggered into the bathroom to see herself crying like a lovesick teenager-- _and oh shit, Eve is taking her hair down in front of me right now_ ….

Eve shook her raven tresses loose and they flowed wild and free in a sensuous halo around her head and Villanelle could swear time had slowed down as they whipped through the air. 

_“C'est étonnant,_ Eve,” she said in a husky whisper. “ _C'est tellement incroyable_.” 

(that is amazing) (that is so amazing)

She was still holding the gun, but Eve could see her hand was shaking ever so slightly.

“ _Merci beaucoup_ ,” Eve purred. “ _Mais avez-vous toujours besoin du pistolet?”_

  
(thank you so much) (but do you need the gun?)

Looking down at the gun Villanelle regarded it for a moment as if wondering _how did that get there?_ and she flicked the safety on. 

“ _Bien. Viens ici. Je veux t'embrasser_.”

(Good. Come here. I want to kiss you)

Like a newborn calf standing on its unsteady legs for the first time, Villanelle stood up and attempted to remind herself how to walk. That was her name, right? She was Villanelle and she there did not exist a scenario where she was not fully and totally in charge of. She stepped forward and approached the older Korean whose arms were open and welcoming.

  
“ _Viens à moi chérie_.” 

(Come to me darling)

She closed the gap between them. If Eve tried to hurt her she could kill her in at least a dozen ways. That was her feral survival instincts kicking in and that had kept her alive many times over when she could have been the one carried out in a body bag. She had learned how to collar that wild side, but at the first sign of danger she could let it off the leash at a moment’s notice.

_Nothing_. The only danger present here was she might go into sensory overload from the lascivious arousal that was surging through her entire body. She stepped into Eve’s embrace as she was pulled close and clutched tight. She gasped slightly. It was every bit as heavenly as she had fantasized it would be. 

_“Votre français est très bon_ , Eve,” she said as she tilted her head and breathed into the shorter woman’s left ear. “ _Pas aussi bon que le mien, mais j'approuve._ ”

(Your French is very good. Not as good as mine, but I approve.)

Eve’s laugh was earnest, “Sorry baby. It’s a work in progress. Maybe if I had the right teacher?’

Villanelle’s hand softly--oh, so softly--stroked Eve’s cheek and she bent her forehead down to press it into Eve’s.

“I am an excellent teacher. Let me show you how the French make love.”

“You aren’t French.”

“Not born there, but quite acclimated and experienced in matters of _l'amour_.”

“Do tell.” Eve’s voice was shaky/husky/needy. They both knew what it was she was hungry for.

“Don’t tell. Show.”

Her slim strong fingers slowly traced over the black lounge wear Eve wore. A small smile crept over her lips as she leaned into Eve who turned her neck to the side as she had so long ago in the kitchen of her house as Villanelle pressed a knife to her sternum and inhaled….

_“La Villanelle._ You are wearing it?”

Eve summoned enough strength to moan, "Of course. I have to wear the scent of you. Nothing else touches my skin.”

“May I touch your skin, Eve? Repeatedly?” 

“I thought you’d never ask. Oksana.”

“You do know you’re the only one who can get away with calling me by that name?”

Eve grinned broadly. “I _do_ know that and I earned the right. Now are you going to make me call you that all night long or are you going to just stand her talking a good game?” 

“You are the worst, Eve Polastri.”

“So are you, Oksana Astankova,” Eve said as she playfully ran her tongue up Villanelle’s neck coaxing a slight whimper of involuntary delight from her. Eve was pleased to learn despite her lack of experience in pleasing a woman, she knew enough to thoroughly screw with the younger woman. She swiftly pressed her advantage. “And you have far too many clothes on.”

“A problem easily solved," Villanelle responded with a thirsty and husky desperation to her voice. "Which way to the bedroom?"

“Don’t you know?" Eve said sarcastically. "What, with you having already broken into my house to see if I had any weapons stashed away or laid any traps?”

She paused a moment before responding. “ _Touche_ , Eve. That is exactly what I did. How did you know that?”

“Under the same circumstances, that’s what I would have done,” Eve said with a deliberately exaggerated grin and they both laughed. 

  
  


No husbands. No handlers. No bosses. No hidden agendas. There was no one but the two of them. For the first time Eve and Villanelle were acting upon their own free will. From here on out once they pushed beyond the manipulative bullshit of MI6 and The Twelve, the only thing that truly stood between E&V was Eve and Villanelle. Beyond that trifling thing, there was nothing between the two of them but air and opportunity. Eve extended her hand which Villanelle readily accepted. She gripped it as if she was hanging on for dear life.

Or on the verge of discovering a brand new one. A small shiver of delight ran through her. 

“I have waited a long time for this, Eve.” There was a deepness to Villanelle's usually carefully modulated voice.

"Your wait is over. We proven how bad we can be to each other. Let’s see if we can be good to each other."

Defenses were lowered. Barriers were breached. Walls had fallen. Lines had been crossed. People change. The wheel turns and the two become one.

Eve kissed Villanelle. It lingered on their lips and Villanelle returned the kiss with equaled arousal. They went to bed where they would spend most of the night and all of Christmas Day there. For too long they had denied themselves the sublime pleasures of each other and now they were making up for wasted time. Much, much later that day, the sun would find them still lying in the bed basking in the afterglow of their slow and deliberate love making. They were soaked in sweat and were coming down from the mutual high. 

Nobody ruined the moment. No hired killers or manipulative handlers or lying spymasters or bumbling husbands. There was only Eve and Villanelle. At last.

This was not love. Not yet. This was Christmas Eve and Eve was bound, determined and singularity focused on giving every inch of herself to the woman whom had haunted her every waking and slumbering moment. Villanelle shared that thought. She would rest for a moment and then pick back up where they had left off. She was insatiable and she would not stop until she no longer was.

For the first time in an extremely long time Eve believed things might get better before they grew worse. That was her sole Christmas wish and whether it was answered by Jesus, Santa or some other imaginary, made-up figure, she no longer cared. For tonight and today they would enjoy this blissful moment between them. 

Tomorrow? That would take care of itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Xmas. If you can't have peace on Earth and good will toward all women and men, at least you have nearly made it through 2019 and you're that much closer to season 3 of _Killing Eve_
> 
> That has to count for something, right? Peace and love to you and yours.


	3. She's My Man: A Christmas Eve Story: Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After surviving Villanelle's "gift," Eve just remembered she has a gift of her own for her would-be killer/lover. 
> 
> She's lost the sales receipt, so she _has_ to give it to Villanelle. If she knows what's good for her.

  


**(created by wellitsnotorigami)**

**I.**

At precisely five minutes before midnight, Eve sat up in bed. She brushed away the wavy locks of hair drooping across the face and rubbed her eyes. She slipped free of Villanelle’s arm draped across her, waking the slumbering woman.

“Hmmm? What’s wrong, Eve? Where are you going?” she murmured. “Come back to bed…” 

Naked as a newborn, Eve jumped up and yelped as her feet hit the cold floor, “Shit! Be right back!”

Villanelle propped herself up on one elbow as Eve disappeared down the steps. She smiled and pulled the covers up to her chin as she waited for her bedmate to return. Eve came pounding up the stairs and hopped back in the bed. 

“Made it with a minute to spare,” she said breathlessly. 

“Eve, you are out of breath just from running up and down the steps? We will have to get you into shape, Kill Commander.”

“Ha-ha. Very fucking funny,” Eve snapped and slapped Villanelle on the thigh. “Now shut up and open your present. Merry Christmas!”

“Oooh! You got me a present? This is exciting!” she cooed and reached over to flick on the table lamp. “What is it?”

“When you open it, you'll know won't you?” 

Villanelle regarded the red bow and matching wrapping paper for a moment, “It’s so pretty I almost hate to tear it off.” Then in a blur of motion she ripped the paper off and in her hand was a little black box. She went speechless for a second and then the seconds turned into a minute.

For once, Villanelle had no words for what she feeling at the moment. Something odd. Something like... _belonging_. 

“Eve--I…” she stammered.

“Shhhh,” Eve interrupted. “It’s okay. Just open it.” She placed a warm and reassuring hand on the arm of the young woman. “Pretend it’s a band-aid and pull it off,” she giggled as Villanelle gave her a look of utter confusion.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you at all, Eve.”

“Uh-huh. Stop stalling. Or are you going to wait until next Christmas to open that?”

“You are so bossy, Eve,” she retorted and opened the box. Inside were two solitaire14K Rose Gold engagement rings. 

Her mouth dropped open and a small gasp slipped out. She stared at the rings, glanced at Eve, then she looked back at the rings.

_Holy shit._

“Does this mean…”

Eve sat up in bed, rolled over on top of Villanelle taking her hands in her own. 

“I want us to be together, darling. I'm in love with you and my world is empty without you in it. Without you, I’m nothing. I need you to be with me” 

The blonde's eyes met Eve’s. “I want you too. I can’t imagine living without you. I love you and want to make you happy.”

This was how things would go between them. All or nothing at all and always--always---at the extremes. Extreme acts of love and even more extreme acts of hate. They came together and they tore apart and were fated to start it all over again.

In a hushed tone Eve asked, “Will you marry me, Oksana Astankova?”

“ Yes, yes, yes ! I will marry you, Eve Polastri.”

Eve’s eyes went glassy as she had been thrown a curve ball by the suddenness of Villanelle’s eager response. 

“Well-- _shit_. Okay. That went better than I thought it would." Simultaneously, they both started giggling.

They embraced and sealed the deal with soft and wet kisses. Villanelle pulled Eve to her breasts and wrapped her arms around her, thrilled by the ecstasy of their bodies meeting and happier than she had ever been in her life. 

“Am I the husband or the wife?” she asked her blonde hair cascading down over her future wife's elegant face. 

“You’re the husband. I’m the wife. You’re stronger than me, so you get to carry me over the threshold,” Eve said with a beaming grin. 

“Eve Astankova” the young Russian mused. “I like it, but what will your friends and family say about you marrying a woman?”

Eve froze in place and glowered menacingly at Villanelle, whom despite not having first-hand experience with all her wife-to-be moods, instantly realized she had said the wrong thing because now Eve was pissed.

“Oksana, let me make something clear and I’m going to say it slowly, but I’m only going to say it once , so please listen to me, okay?”

She nodded in the affirmative. 

“What other people have to say about whom I fall in love with is none of their damn business. That goes double for my sex life and that’s all that needs to be said about that. You and I are a couple and if that bugs anyone, oh fucking well. Cry me a river.”

Long before she showed up in her apartment, Eve had given literally hours of thought to what she would say and do when Villanelle reappeared in her life. Emphasis on _when_ , not _if_. The former agent knew Villanelle would find her wherever she was in the world (and vice-versa). Eve could be angry and swear to exact revenge for being shot in Rome, but she had done that already in Paris and nothing good had come from it. She had convinced herself she could be an avenging angel for Bill, her fallen friend, but had ended up full of even greater regret and remorse. 

Later on she found out she could kill another human being and while she didn’t regret or feel remorseful for slaughtering Raymond, to her sorrow she had discovered she wasn’t as much like Villanelle as she thought she was. She felt.. _nothing_ after committing her first murder. 

Not joy. Not sorrow. Not grief. Not excitement. Nothing but a yawning, vast void. Nothing except the certainty she would not--- _could not_ \--- **ever** bring herself to kill again unless in self-defense, and even then when there was no other option. 

Villanelle had a compulsion to kill and maybe that would always stay with her, but Eve did not have that insatiable urge driving her on. She could control and manage her own homicidal impulses. Of this, Eve was certain of and was confident she, and only she, could build the sort of trust in Villanelle to reign in those same instincts as even Konstantin had failed to. After all, Konstantin was at best a stand-in father figure to the assassin. She wasn’t having sex with Konstantin. Their relationship was first professional and had grown to be platonic and celibate.

Fuck that. Eve had other ideas. 

_I haven’t wanted anyone in my life as much as I want her. Her face is flawless. Her body was kissed by nature and blessed by God. She excites me and tantalizes me in ways no man ever has. I want this woman. I want her more than I want my life itself._ _I can do this. I can be the anchor so she doesn’t drift off. I can be what provides Villanelle a reason to change. I can DO this! I know I can. Nobody else can!_

She snuggled deeper into Villanelle’s embrace. In response, Villanelle held her tight and began to stroke Eve's hair, whispering sweet nothings in her ears in multiple languages. Before long, Eve drifted back to sleep in the loving arms of her divine obsession. Her dreams began tranquil and peaceful. Later they would grow steamy and wicked. All was well in her world and her slumber was blissfully serene. 

Not Villanelle. She remained awake. Wide awake and deep in contemplation over what had just happened. 

**II.**

_She wants to change me to save me_. _She thinks I'm broken and only she can fix me_. _The poor dear_. 

This was an endless source of amusement to Villanelle. She loved Eve. At least, she loved Eve as best she grasped the nebulous concept of “love.” 

Oksana Astankova was a high school dropout. The trajectory of her existence in Russia was clear. She was destined to be a nothing, a nobody, a non-entity. She would marry someone she did not love, but could reasonably tolerate. They would have meaningless, passionless sex and her belly would swell and nine months later she have the first of many ankle-biting brats; She would age and grow older and she would put on weight, grow big and fat and her ass would get wide and her tits would droop, which wouldn't matter since she would be married to an equally, big, fat and ugly husband and before too long he would stop fucking her and she would die a dried up, unloved and sexually frustrated old woman.

_Fuck that_. 

Villanelle did not have to have to attend college to have a Master’s degree in understanding how the human mind worked. She occupied a high ranking on the deviance scale, but she wasn’t the only one on it. Not by a far sight. Eve was certainly on it. She was already deviant in so many ways. Her morality was fluid. Her sexuality had done a complete turnaround. She lied with ease and deceived with impressive grace. Eve could be cold and cruel and malicious. Here was a woman with a savage side that only required a bit of coaxing to emerge. Eve had a nasty mean streak and given the proper preparation she could be wicked.

This stimulated Villanelle with obscene delight. 

It was not _she_ who was broken. That would be the former Mrs. Polastri who was in dire need of repairs. She had come to the right mechanic. Villanelle would fix her. Fix Eve so good she would be better than she had ever been. Fix her so that this Asian woman with the amazing hair would be as grand and glorious as Villanelle herself.

A killer. Of this she was certain. Eve was not normal though she played at it. She was afraid of what laid inside her just as Villanelle had once been. But that was long ago and now she was afraid no longer. 

Who would Eve be when Villanelle had completed this task? Someone different. Someone wild, cruel and ferocious. Someone to be feared. 

Eve was on a spiral. Whether it was down into the dank darkness or upward into authentic evil remained to be determined, but returning to the nice, nameless, bored civil servant and wife was no longer an alternative. Those days were over. Those days were dead, buried and forgotten. There was no place for to go back to even if Eve wanted to. 

She would not allow it. Eve belonged to Villanelle now and to Villanelle only. She would not share so magnificent a creature with anyone else. Eve belonged to Villanelle as much as Villanelle belonged to Eve.

_We Are The SAME_. At long last, Eve had proven herself worthy of the great and glorious gift Villanelle had bestowed upon her. An opportunity to transcend past the puny and limiting restrains of the nice, straight-laced and boring-as-fuck world Eve had occupied for over 40 years. From here on out these two would be one. Until death put them apart. Of this, Villanelle was certain as looked lovingly as Eve slumbered peacefully in her embrace. 

And she would never let Eve go. **NEVER.**

All she needed was the right prodding and it wasn’t going to take long to get Eve where Villanelle wanted her to be. Because Eve wanted it too. Villanelle was certain of it. She simply wasn’t honest enough with herself to admit it.

There had been so many women of a certain age since Anna. Lonely, unhappy women. Women whom had reached the peak of their sexuality only to find they were no longer fuckable They had been passed by and put out to pasture by a patriarchal reign of terror which regarded “the weaker sex” as forever inferior and consigned to be put out of their misery like dried-up mares once the studs lose interest followed by their erections.

_Fuck that._

Villanelle appreciated older women. She liked the younger women, but she enjoyed the older ones. They had stories to tell and knowledge to give out. They shared everything and they gave willingly. Eve was hardly the first woman to turn their back on the "life" they thought they enjoyed knew for Villanelle. She had gone to bed with more people than she had killed. She couldn't recall their names, but she never forgot what she had learned from them.

None of them moved her the way this brilliant woman did. There was no shortage of women and men who had broken their wedding vows, emptied their bank accounts and showered her with money, sex, and the most expensive, extravagant toys in exchange for a few hours of her precious time. It was so tedious. Nobody was deserving Villanelle until Eve put in her claim. Now they would belong to each other.

For a while at least, but it would be a busy time. The killer in her was taking a break, but wasn’t idle. Villanelle had a list and she was preparing to start crossing names off of it. She was going to exterminate The Twelve. She was going to find and butcher Konstantin and his family. She was going to cut off the head of Carolyn Martens and place it at Eve’s feet on a silver platter. She was going to pay Nico a friendly little visit early one morning. She would allow him to resist, to struggle and to fight as long as it amused her. Then she would vivisection him and take her time doing it. 

Maybe Eve would like to watch. Maybe she would join in on the fun. 

She would allow her wife-to-be the happy illusion she was following her own path and not the one Villanelle had paved for her. Now that she was wearing Eve’s engagement ring she would have all the time she needed. While Eve was healing, Villanelle had carefully reviewed what had gone wrong in Rome. Her cursed impatience led her to blunder by trying to rush into existence an Eve that was not yet ready to be born. But now? Now nothing remained to bind her to her pathetic little life in London. Every connection had been cut and that was in no small part due to how Villanelle masterful she had been in leading Eve precisely where she thought she was going of her own free will. 

Yes, she had learned from Rome and _this_ was the reward.

Villanelle was looking for a partner, but not merely a life partner to watch movies with, but one who would join her in dealing out death and fall to the task with the same delight she did. In this failed MI6 agent, she had found her mate. All that was required was the precise movements for Eve to go from passive resistor to active participant. 

She would learn the dark arts of assassination from a master assassin and be reborn as a lethal executioner. It would months, but Eve was already teetering on the edge and Villanelle would be the impetus which would erase the closing chapters of Eve’s previously wasted life. When she was done there would be _no one_ Eve would be unwilling to obliterate. To please her mate, Eve would drown her own mother in a tub or set her ex-husband on fire, if that’s what it took. 

First, came the catharsis. Next, would come the chaos. 

Eve was a killer. The same as Villanelle was. She had ridiculed the idea of them rampaging through the world as a contemporary Bonnie and Clyde, but Eve had missed what Villanelle actually had in mind was Bonnie _and Bonnie_. Shooting and slaughtering their way into history, and then immortality. It was not Villanelle’s desire to live to a ripe old age and she had no interest in changing Eve’s adult diapers when she reached her sunset years. 

_Fuck that._

No one could manipulate her. Many had tried and none had come closer than this unique woman she nestled to her bosom. Yet not even how special Eve was to her would convince Villanelle to go anywhere she did not want to go. This is how she controlled the situation. This is how she held onto her personal power and she would not share it or give it up to anyone. 

Not even Eve. _Especially_ not Eve. 

The maintenance of her agency came with the side effect of making Villanelle terribly lonely. Many would give their bodies and riches to her, but nobody really understood her. Certainly not Anna and definitely not Nadia, Konstantin and The Twelve. But Eve understood. Eve understood because everything about Villanelle was everything Eve desired. 

She would give it to Eve. She would give her _**everything**_ . It might be perched atop a smoking mountain of putrefied corpses, but Eve deserved it. It was obvious she craved it. Hungered for it. Thirsted for it. Would die for it. Would kill for it. 

And she would take everything from Eve as well and she would not stop until what she had told Konstantin that last time in Rome was finally an indisputable truth.

_We are the same._

She would never be alone again. Eve would be as much a part of her as her good right arm. She would be incredible and amazing. Just as she was. 

For even if it turned out that Eve was not the same as her, the option remained to kill them both. Failure was not possible, but should it come to pass and Eve proved she was not special, then their mutual destruction was assured. Eve would live with her or perish with her. No other choice remained. 

“Eve?” she inquired as she lazily brushed her hair away from her neck and face. 

“Yes?” she replied drowsily.

“Am I your woman?”

Eve stirred and seemed to contemplate her reply. “Yes, but you’re so much more than that, darling.”

“What else?” Villanelle asked with eagerness.

“You are my man and I--I am your woman. Forever.”

Villanelle swallowed and checked to ensure neither her hands or voice trembled before she responded.

"Do you mean it? You will stay with me and you will never leave me?"

"That's what 'forever' means, baby." she replied with a sleepy smile. Then Eve dozed back off.

Villanelle’s face beamed with a delighted glow. The lamb was walking into the lair of the wolf freely and of its own will. Or so it thought. 

“I cannot tell you how happy I am right now, my sweet Eve. I love you.” 

What a wonderful Christmas this had been and the next one would be even better. By then they would bound together and not simply with rings, but by blood. Rushing red rivers of blood. 

They both fell asleep with satisfied smiles on their faces, but for vastly different reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, kudoed or commented. May Villanelle break in your house and visit you in your bathroom. 
> 
> Just think: It's 2020. Now we are only four months away before our favorite obsession returns. Hopefully. It's only eight episodes, so come on dammit!
> 
> Don't forget Jodie Comer's up for Best Actress at The Golden Globe Awards this Sunday. I probably won't watch all of it, but I'm curious to see what she wears (and whether Sandra, Fiona, or Phoebe show up to lend support).
> 
> The Murder Wives will return.


	4. A Killer Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year has passed since Villanelle showed up in Eve's apartment and threatened to make her the "murder" part of "murder-suicide." That wasn't much of a Christmas, so by mutual agreement the next Christmas will be their official first one. 
> 
> Eve has plans for the holiday, but Villanelle has work to do. 
> 
> Conflict is inevitable.

  
**  
**

**(Eve and Villanelle by ANDY)**

  
  


**one**

  
  


**QUEBEC CITY** \- It was the week before Christmas and Eve and Villanelle were about to spend their first year together as a couple and it would culminate in their first proper no-holding-the-other-at-gunpoint, actual holiday together. Eve was excited. 

Normally, she didn’t get excited by this sort of thing. Christmas, Thanksgiving and all that holiday horseshit all blurred together in a cacophony of noisy nonsense that had simply never interested her. Whether it was in Connecticut or in England, she simply hadn’t gotten into the spirit of the season.

Eve had little use for Christmas music and office parties and gift exchanges and forced frivolity. Niko could take it or leave it too, but he wasn’t quite the Scrooge that Eve was. Or at least she had been while she had worked at MI5. She preferred grumbling about the cold outside than drinking some god-awful eggnog inside at a party full of people she didn’t know.   
  
“Waste of time,” was her typical reply when asked to join in on the mandated fun. 

If not for Bill wearing his traditional ugly Xmas sweaters and Elena making rude jokes at his expense, she would have been just as happy to pass on the whole thing. Being nice to Frank and singing sappy Christmas songs in the office was asking too much of Eve.

This time was different. Instead of good ol’ Niko who was easy to shop for and easier to please, Eve was on the hunt for something special and brilliant and as beautifully unique as the woman who was at home waiting for her to return home from shopping.

Actually, she knew Oksana wasn’t home. She was some 4000 km from home. She had left a day earlier after Eve had dropped her off at the airport. As usual, Oksana wasn’t forthcoming with specific details about her “work.” All she had told Eve was that she had business in Los Angeles and that she would be back a few days before Christmas. 

Eve sighed and breathed heavily through her facemask. She knew that Oksana wasn’t home because Villanelle had a job to do.

  
  


**two**  
  
  
  
**LOS ANGELES** \- She parked the rental car at the base of the hillside and stared up the driveway to the multi-million dollar estate of the record producer. He had made his money by finding starry-eyed singer/songwriters, signing them to contracts heavily weighted in his favor, and insisted he should both share songwriting credits as well as serve as the album producer. 

Not that he had a creative bone in his body. He allowed the musicians and the engineer to make the call on how the arrangements and how to play them should go. They could have the fame and he would take the fortune.   
  
His latest victim was a tall blonde from Kentucky who had successfully crossed over from country to pop and grown her base of support exponentially. Now she was dipping her toe into film and television. Despite her first major film being a dismal adaptation of a long-running and beloved Broadway musical, she had escaped the blame for the movie flopping. 

She was heartbroken that her unscrupulous producer had parlayed his share into millions by selling her back catalogue of songs to a third party who had their own plans on monetizing them for commercials, video games, films and whatever else.   
  
There were also rumors that this producer liked his girls young and not necessarily above the age of consent. Nothing beyond the whispering stage, but there was enough smoke to the allegations to look for signs of a fire.  
  


Villanelle didn’t care about this guy’s creepy rep. She cared very much for the large bounty on his head. 

There was a $150,000 contract for the producer's death, and Villanelle had been offered it by a third party middleman who brokered the deal. Rumor had it was the singer’s parents who had put out the hit. Villanelle had no idea who wanted this guy dead, but there were two explicit instructions for the kill that made it seem more personal than business: _Make him hurt and make it messy_.

Sounds personal. 

Not a problem, she mused as she tied her hair into a ponytail and stuffed it under a black cap. This entire shitty year had hurt her line of work and she was in a foul mood. Messing up somebody who deserved a big slice of pain suited her just fine. 

Even assassins aren’t safe from a pandemic. COVID-19 had crippled the airline and hotel and transportation industries. Nations and cities were in lockdown and imposing curfews. This made it tough for Villanelle to do what she did best: get in, get it done and get back out without being seen or heard. 

With fewer places to go or reasons to be out, more potential targets were staying close to home and homes were not her favorite places to take someone out. The issues with security systems, family members being around, dogs roaming the premises, packages being delivered to the home--- _ugh_. 

The amount of time and planning Villanelle had to put into the grunt work of running surveillance and actually having to learn something about the target was a huge pain as well as an expense. She had been in Los Angeles for nearly a week trailing this loser and learning his habits. It was at moments like this where she honestly missed Konstantin and the resources of The Twelve. 

All this for a lousy $150K? If it wasn’t for the fact this guy was such a slimy worm, she might not bother. But she had come across a $35,000 Elsa Peretti necklace for Eve at Tiffany & Co. in Beverly Hills and already scheduled a viewing of it for tomorrow. After that she’d be back on a plane to Canada and back in her wife’s loving arms.

_Her wife_. For a moment she pondered why those words pleased her so. She had enjoyed her life as an international assassin. First-class travel. The grand accommodations. The delicious delicacies. The warm flesh of willing partners and the hot smell of cordite from a fired gun. 

That was a good life and Eve wasn’t part of it. Now she was. This was a better life. 

She got out of the car, grabbed her knapsack, pressed the lock on the key fob, and walked up the driveway. She stopped for a moment, rummaging through the bag. A gun and an extra round of ammo that she had cleaned and loaded hours earlier. The knives were sharp and ready to do their terrible work.   
  
She hummed a pop song she had heard several times since landing in L.A. and now it was stuck in her head. Some silly trifle called “You Need To Calm Down.” It almost made her snicker. 

If she got excited she might chop his knob off, but under no circumstances would she pickle it. No, she was wavering between sticking it in his mouth or shoving it up his ass. _Decisions, decisions…_.

She slung the knapsack over her shoulder, pulled a baseball cap over her head, and humming she legged it up the driveway. 

**three**

  
  


**Quebec City:** Twas the night before Christmas and Eve was running around the apartment like her long raven locks were on fire. Outside, snow was beginning to fall as fat snowflakes covered cars, sidewalks and painted the world outside the window white. 

Not that Eve had time to appreciate it. _Everything_ had to be clean. The carpet was vacuumed, the furniture polished and the glasses and silverware sparkling. It was a flat surface; it had been dusted, mopped, scrubbed and ready for inspection. 

The hardest thing was balancing precariously on a chair to hang the mistletoe. This was going to be their first real Christmas together and it was going to be perfect. Nothing could be left to chance. The place had to be immaculate. 

According to her flight plans, Oksana's flight was due to touch ground within the next two hours, though Eve wondered if the weather might alter the schedule. She had sounded so tired, Eve thought. _Well, let me give her a good reason to be happy she’s home._

Eve had prepared dinner and found a wine suitable for her husband’s demanding standards to pair with t[ he bulgogi ](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017444-bulgogi-korean-grilled-beef), which was almost ready. For dessert she had ordered banana cream eclairs, assorted macaroons, and a mocha yule log from Première Moisson, one of Quebec City’s finest French bakeries. There were also fresh croissants for a light breakfast tomorrow. 

Decadent, but oh so delicious. For their sins, Oksana would make them both spend an extra hour in the home gym. Sweets for the sweet now, but sweating off those empty calories later would be the penance for this indulgence. 

Eve smiled. Somehow even working out didn’t suck as long as she was doing it with Oksana.

They would be needed after the strenuous workout, Eve had planned for her husband this evening. Their bedroom was already prepped and ready for a serious night of passion. New satin sheets. Rose petals. A bottle of champagne was chilling. The apartment was immaculate. 

Now it was her turn and she hurried to shower and prepare for a lot of Christmas cheer. A splendid repast awaited the husband and the wife had to ensure she was equally delectable. . 

She had endured three hours of tedium at the hairdresser to have her mane washed, dried and styled, an ordeal she hadn’t endured even once in the decade or so when in her first, failed marriage, but here and with _her_ , that made it worth every minute.

Eve's hair was swept up with curly bangs cascading around her face. She wore the Thea Miller hoop earrings with white topaz and black diamond charms Oksana had surprised her with on her birthday. She felt sleek and seductive in the [ Hervé Léger ](https://herveleger.com/collections/dresses-lbd/products/opaque-and-sheer-long-slv-dress-black-001) opaque and sheer long sleeve bodycon black dress that left little to the imagination.   
  
Oksana had been gone for most of the week, so Eve’s imagination of what she was going to do to her was rather vivid. She had briefly considered waiting for her lover to step in the door and find her there naked except for a bright red bow, waiting to be unwrapped. 

This Christmas was going to be the best Eve had ever had. Just as soon as Oksana came home.

**four**

Three hours later, Eve had gone from worried to pissed to disappointed to frustrated to back to worried again. Four text messages had gone unanswered. Four calls had gone straight to voicemail. 

Eve was scared. She knew Oksana could take care of herself, but it couldn’t be helped. For all she knew her husband could be locked up in a jail cell, if she was lucky. Or face down in a shallow grave never to be found, if she was unlucky.

This was the part of their lives Eve despised. When Oksana went into full-Villanelle mode she put at risk everything they were trying to build. Even these freelance jobs carried huge risks and without a spy agency or an organization like The Twelve to provide support and cover for what she did, Oksana was relying on less reliable independent contractors like herself. 

Eve didn’t want that life anymore for herself and she knew that disappointed Oksana. No matter how much she loved Eve, there was a part of herself she kept locked away and sealed off from the rest of the world. 

She cried some more wishing for something she could not have as long as Oksana was present: peace of mind. Before her, that’s all she had. She gazed out the bedroom window at the snowy and vacant streets below. Other people were preparing for Christmas. She was worrying herself sick over a professional killer who was late getting home. 

Weary and heartsick, she forgot about the cold bulgogi and began to undress. She hung up the dress and removed the jewelry, carefully placing it away. She walked into the bathroom and gazed sullen and depressed at the clown in the mirror whose make-up was running down her face from crying so much.

“You looked pretty hot a couple of hours ago,” she murmured as she removed her mascara and eye-liner. “Now you just look like a hot mess.” 

Sniffling, she washed her face, flossed and brushed her teeth, and took a quick shower. She toweled dry and dropped it on the bathroom floor. It was too much effort to put it away with the dirty clothes. She took one last long look out the window staring at the gently falling snowflakes.

It was 11:45 pm. Santa would be on his way, but Eve no longer cared. Christmas Eve with Oksana was supposed to be everything. Without her, she would be sleeping cold and alone. She brushed the rose petals off the bed and slipped between the sheets. 

“Good night, Oksana. Wherever you are.”

She fell into a fitful and dreamless sleep. Who needed Christmas anyway?

**five**

  
  


Curled into a fetal ball, Eve gradually slipped into a semi-conscious state, but she was alert enough to hear the slam of a car door, followed by the soft beep of the security system being disarmed. The jangle of keys in the lock indicated that Oksana was home. 

Eve listened to her swear softly in Russian as she pulled off her boots and dropped them by the door, in respect to her wife’s insistence of no outside shoes inside their home. 

_Finally._ She pulled the sheets up around her chin and pretended to be asleep.

A few moments later she heard Oksana coming up the steps. It didn’t sound like her usual cadence and she could hear the younger woman grunt a bit as she pulled herself up the bannister to the master bedroom.

The room was still dark as the door swung open. Then the mattress dipped as Oksana climbed into bed and began to kiss Eve’s neck and stroke her naked hip.

“I know when you’re faking sleep, Eve,” she whispered into Eve’s left ear. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I fucked up.”

Eve turned over, grabbed Oksana by the back of the head as she kissed her hard on the mouth. She rolled over and on top of the blonde who accepted the older woman’s demanding ways. 

“Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Just lay there. I’ll take care of you right now.”

Eve unbuttoned Oksana’s white blouse and then moved to her black jeans, which for some reason were already unbuckled. She pulled them down her hips where Eve suddenly stopped.

“No panties? You dirty girl.”

“Sorry, baby. I got excited,” Oksana said with a wide grin. “I knew you didn’t want to waste time.”

Eve dipped down between Oksana’s legs and parted her thighs. She slid a finger inside and thrilled to her husband’s excited gasp.

“You got that right. I missed dinner waiting for you to come home. Time for a midnight snack.”

Eve’s momentum was stopped by Oksana’s strong hands on her shoulders. “Ugh, no, Eve! I’ve been traveling all day, sitting on my ass and walking around airports. I need a shower and like _right now_. You’re in too much of a hurry!”

She was interrupted by Eve nipping her pussy with her teeth. “It’s cute that you think I give a shit, but I don’t. I’ve waited for you all day and all night, and I’m not waiting for you any longer. I don’t care if you’re a little tart.”

Before she could say another word, Eve had adroitly wiggled around and now she was lying on top of Oksana dipping her tongue between the folds of her pussy and sucking with enthusiastic energy on her clit with Eve now conveniently lined up in front of her mouth.

“Oh fuck it,” she said and dived in head first, “Merry Christmas, Eve.”

Eve raised her head to look over her shoulder back at Oksana, then shot her a look. 

“Ho-ho-ho, yourself. Stop talking and get busy down there. We’re going to talk about this later--much later.” Eve dove headfirst back to business and Oksana followed her lead, but allowed herself a fleeting thought.  
  
  


_She’s like this every time I go away and return to her. What will she be like when she has me around all the time? I haven’t told her but that was my last job. I’m hanging up my guns and putting away my knives. The best present I can give Eve are three little words:_ **_I am done_ **.

It could wait for later in the morning. There were more immediate and important matters to do and right now one of them was lying on her face and driving her mad with quick, then slow strokes of a carefully trained tongue.

Oksana could have laughed out loud and likely would have if Eve wasn’t seconds away from making her come. Eve noticed her lapse in concentration and lightly nipped her pussy lips again as Oksana yelped and smacked Eve’s ass.

“Don’t get distracted on me yet, Oksana. After we finish Round One, I’ll let you take that shower and if you’re a good girl, I’ll even wash your back, but only if you’re good,” Eve said in a low, sexy voice. “I’m still a little mad at you, but I’ll let you make it up to me.”

“Yes, wife,” Oksana replied meekly. “Anything you say, honey. By the way? What did you get me for Christmas?”

Eve said nothing but grabbed Oksana’s ass cheeks and ground her mouth further and deeper between her legs and this time the young woman howled as her legs began to tremble with an old, familiar feeling.

“Right now, I’m getting you off. Lie back and enjoy it.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't feel like writing a new one-shot while I already had a perfectly good _Killing Eve_ Christmas story just sitting there. With no new material from the show likely until 2022 ( _sob!_ ) adding a chapter around the holiday might turn out to be an annual event.
> 
> Or it might not.


End file.
